Fenton and Wall: Goff might be happy

It has occurred to me that Phil Goff may actually be happy about the abusive, ignorant and hostile comments made by Darien Fenton and Louisa Wall towards NZ icon Sir Peter Leitch.

Goff knows that the election is over. That there is SFA he can do to turn things around. That his leadership has failed to inspire.

But he obviously doesn’t want to blame defeat on himself. Whatever we might all think about Goff as Labour leader, we would all agree that he’s not the only reason for Labour’s bad polling.

And so, the blame game will be developed in the Goffice, for what will be the concession speech from hell. He will need excuses, and he has plenty of those now.

Perhaps it will sound something like this:

“Frankly, we didn’t deserve to win this election when senior members of the caucus were more interested in hate than love, more interested in blame than responsibility, than making enemies instead of making friends.

Our campaign manager plumbed new depths of narcissm online.
Our communications expert offended people with her comments.
A senior Maori caucus member developed an unhealthy porn addiction.
Another caucus member was more interested in taxpayer travel than working class rights.
A union member abused a businessman hero and kept it up until even our closest allies told her to shut up.

To the man or woman who takes over from me tonight, I sincerely wish you the best of luck, and I hope for Labour’s sake, you cut out the cancer from the party that I could not treat with inclusiveness and gentle prodding. Good luck Mr Shearer.

Yes, Goff has been a bad leader. Labour should have rolled him some time ago. But how do Labour roll an entire half of a caucus?

Do you want ad-free access to our Daily Crossword?

Do you want access to daily Incite Politics Magazine articles?

Silver Subscriptions and above go in the draw to win a $500 prize to be drawn at the end of March

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. And when he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet, and as a result he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist that takes no prisoners.